Why are Women Like Chickens? Or Cows? Cyberfeminism Interrogates Biotechnology

Today,
completely new biological bodies are being created through molecular genetic
engineering, cloning, stem cell cultivation, and transgenics. Laboratory
constructed human embryos, animals, plants and trans-species are
proliferating in our environment. These are fleshed beings beyond any previously
known category, transgressing boundaries in ways previously only imagined in
myth and science fiction. An era of interspecies technologies introduces
irrevocable changes in reproductive and generative processes, the raw materials
of which are often (female) human and animal body parts. Many knowledge/power
systems intersect and collide on this biotech frontier: from computing
technologies, medicine, and genetics to religion, philosophy, and feminist
theory. And yet there is very little public debate or critical analysis engaging
the philosophical, ethical, and political issues of difference raised by the
new bio sciences. This artist lecture takes a critical look at cultural
meanings and representations of reproductive and recombinant biotechnologies, in
which human and animal bodies are becoming distributed, patented bodies, part
of a global exchange of property and value. 

Organized by: City of Women
In collaboration with: Škuc Gallery
With the support of: the Embassy of the United States of America
in Ljubljana, Robert
Morris University,
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago